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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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In
a nearby town, late at night, a woman playsher stereo louder and longer than her neighbors can bear. At
last, they call the police.

The
woman who has cranked three hours of CDs is drunk and uncooperative, no
surprise to the police, but she also owns snakes, and when the police enter her
home, intending to subdue her, she uses them as a weapon, hissing “Back off” as
she brandishes her copperheads, two in each hand, like automatic weapons.

The
situation becomes a stand-off. They were responding to a simple disturbing the
peace complaint, but now the two policemen keep their distance for a
curse-filled hour.

Other
police arrive. The call’s description of the stalemate has made them curious,
and finally the room is dotted with uniforms.

Though
religion isn’t a force in that room, the woman repeating blasphemies, she has
the faith of those churchgoers who decide which of them is saved by their ease
with snakes. Her pets, naturally, are leery of the small congregation of law.

Finally,
she’s bitten, and more than once. She disarms herself by dropping the snakes
back under glass. “It wasn’t surrender,” she’s quoted in the next day’s
newspaper’s account. “Just a truce.”

“You
own snakes like mine, you learn your poisons,” she says. “I knew I could still
be saved, and those cops, they listened to me as if they’d accidentally shot
me.”

One of
those policemen agreed that even with that woman reduced from criminal to
patient, he, at least, kept a space between himself and her as if she might
lunge and strike. “Self-defense,” the woman says. “That’s all it was I was doing.”

2

For
self-defense, my mother recommended the power of positive thinking. Until I
reached sixth grade, she read passages to me from books and magazines about
believing in myself, how it improved the immune system of both the body and the
mind, keeping sickness and sin at bay.

“Hush
now,” my mother would say. “Headaches are no worse than pimples. Get busy.
Forget the pain.” She worked and drank coffee to subdue hers, swallowing the
home treatments of busyness and caffeine.

At my
grandmother’s house, in the living room where there was a television, something
we didn’t own during that time, my mother arranged chairs from the kitchen like
three pieces of a straight-backed pew. My sister and I filed in behind her with
reverence, because on Sunday nights Bishop Fulton Sheen would take half an hour
to improve us.

“Life
is worth living,” he repeated, sounding just like the minister I’d listened to
ten hours earlier. Like a teacher, he wrote words and phrases on a backboard: Self-confidence
breeds ­self-improvement; eternal success is heaven’s joy.

Didn’t
I see, my mother would say, that the best self-defense was faith? That I could
influence eternity by heeding Christ? When I closed my eyes I saw the shows my
friends had told me I was missing on other channels. While Bishop Sheen
flourished his robed arms into a brief drama of blessing, I thought of the bus
ride to school the following morning, the chatter of my friends, and how I
would look out the window as if anything that might be seen along Route 8 was more
interesting than a summary of jokes and crime-solving from the night before.

3

In
1957, the army produced The Big Picture, a program for television to
lessen the fears of the public about nuclear explosions. My family owned a
television now, and we watched.

The Big
Picture unrolled like a group photograph from summer camp. It said
dusk on the desert is a reflective time, this particular one, perhaps, a bit
more than most. It said the awesome was ready and able, but in the minds of
some men, fundamental questions remained.

The Big
Picture showed a chaplain who preached the gospel of a fireball
ascending into heaven. I listened as he said the cloud had all the rainbow’s
rich colors before it turned into a beautiful pale yellow mushroom.

The Big
Picture silenced us and held our breath. It turned so bright we
remembered staring at the sun.

The Big
Picture argued that the right answer for safety near the blast was
wearing regular clothes. It wanted men exposed to the pressure of a forced,
post-blast march. It followed those men to Ground Zero and assured us the
soldiers were adequately informed.

The Big
Picture went to commercial when the men lost composure. It stayed
mum about terror. Like Jesus, it taught us we needn’t be afraid.

4

Because
it was something the weak did, the first time I used an inhaler I heard my
father criticizing a boy who wheezed in church until he was led, at last, from
a front pew by his mother’s hand.

I could
see Sharon Rogers at the dance she invited me to in eighth grade, her pale skin
and her beige-colored inhaler, the first I ever saw. She made me think of the
girls Poe wrote about, the beauty of someone young and vulnerable. My father,
when I recounted the evening, said nobody, as Sharon had told me, could be
allergic to dust. “How could you live?” he said. “It’s everywhere, like air.”

Because
my own three children were young, a night light was on in the bathroom where I
stood holding the plastic tube like a handgun I might press against my temple.
My breath whistled its warning of possible silence, yet I spent another minute
examining my dim self in the mirror to mark who I’d become at thirty-eight,
someone who relied on medicine for self-defense, someone ashamed of his
dependence.

At
last, I inhaled that mist, holding it in my lungs, repeating the dose twice for
relief. I walked barefooted through the drawn-drape darkness of my living room,
daring the furniture to be out of place or toys scattered like tacks on the
floor. I could hear my father repeating “Sick days” like a synonym for shit. I
believed my future, now, was warm and small, waiting in a thicket for darkness
because there was nothing worse than weakness.

5

A swarm
of ants had somehow materialized on the counter by our kitchen sink. My mother
said she would explain, “Just this once, so listen,” giving advice on keeping
ants at bay:

It’s
too late now, but ants have cucumber allergies. Bits of skin will clear the
places where they swarm.

It’s
too late now, but ants hate chalk. They will seldom cross a thick line that
circles around something that you love.

A
little lemon juice can be a moat. See how I’m soaking the doorway and the
window sill?

But now
that somebody’s let them in, soak this sponge in sugar water. Leave it on this
plate while I heat some water. It won’t be long before those ants congregate
like pigs. See? Let them do exactly that before you use these tongs to pick up
that sponge and plunge it into the boiling water.

You’re
not finished. Wash that sponge out and wring it hard. Begin again. There are
always stragglers.

You
know what ants do? They point out our carelessness, a crowd of them teeming
where dessert was dropped, a bit so tiny some people don’t bend for it.
Something like pennies on the sidewalk, so little to be gained some people
leave them like litter. Think about that. And make sure you don’t forget these
old remedies I’m handing down. The ants will stay outside where they belong.

6

Like
oatmeal, spinach, and bread crusts, blunt talk put hair on your chest and grew
the muscles you needed to take care of business. It separated heroes from
cowards, and Coach Czak used it like an open hand, clapping boys who took a
charge on the back, saying “Hell, yes,” to the players who earned floor burns
diving for loose balls.

Blunt
talk was Coach Czak saying, “Having that time of the month?” when someone was
tired. He was getting us ready for the world or the army where, either way,
blunt talk would show us exactly where we stood. In business, the hesitant were
losers; in Vietnam, the cowardly would get you killed. The 1960s were ripe, but
we weren’t, not yet, and Coach Czak would help us grow. “Just wait,” he
promised, “When we’re finished here, you’ll all be different,” and we were,
clearing our throats for the first barrage of blunt talk, trying it out on the
weak and quiet, ready to work our way up like boxers, ready to be serious
contenders.

7

In
college, one night, a friend told me I needed to learn the self-defense of
boxing. “With a mouth like yours, somebody’s always going to want to pound your
face,” he said, and I had to agree.

I was a
trash-talker in basketball. I yammered condescending insults at strangers who
struck me as pretentious or stupid. In short, I was a fool for obnoxious
phrases, and yet he sensed that I was, in short, “a pussy.”

We were
alone in the recreation room of our fraternity house. He handed me a set of
padded gloves. I was taller than he was by three inches, but he outweighed me
by twenty-five pounds. With those gloves loosely tied on my hands, I felt like
Stick-Man.

He
showed me jabs and hooks, weight-shift and how to bob and weave and keep my
arms in and hands high. “Go ahead,” he said, “try to hit me. I’ll give you a
little while before I fight back.”

It
seemed like an easy lesson, my friend just backing off a step or moving from
side to side, gloves up and absorbing all of my half-hearted punches, all of
them right-handed. “You have a left hand,” he said, pointing out the obvious. I
threw another right, discouraged, beginning to prepare a short speech full of
promises to practice keeping my mouth shut.

He
deflected that punch and said, “You ready to block now?” I nodded, trying to
mimic what I’d just seen him do. I didn’t even see the first hook. I hadn’t
thought about anybody using his left hand for anything but jabs and defense.

Rat-a-tat,
rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. The rhythm of his punches against my head came with the
comic book sound of World War II machine guns. I was suddenly afraid he
wouldn’t stop until I went down, and then, holding my breath, I covered my face
with my forearms and abandoned the soft parts of my body.

I was
pounded. I was slammed. I was hammered. There was a dog whistle trilling in my
head. I took two steps back and was thrilled when he didn’t follow so I could
work the gloves loose and let them drop to the floor. “You can’t close your
eyes like that,” he said. “You can’t hold your hands like that and expect to
live.”

I
wanted to say something interesting and settled for “Screw this.” The headache
he gave me lasted two full days.

8

Once,
the father of a girl I was dating led me outside of the house he owned that had
six times the floor space of my parents’ house to explain the advantages of
natural security. “Some people use beehives along their borders,” he said. “Some
have tried seven-scent mint because it releases a ­powerful smell when stepped
on by anybody who’s trespassing,” making me understand that the gated driveway
was the only acceptable entrance.

He told
me there were 4.7 acres he could call his own. He showed me around, describing
what he owned, and guided me, finally, toward what I took to be the outermost
edge of his property because there was a wall of head-high hedges. “Touch
these,” he said, showing me the stiletto thorns. “Look how thick,” he said, and
I took his word, seeing nothing beyond the tightly clustered leaves and
branches.

“People
who need protection should look into trifoliate orange,” he said. “It grows to
twenty feet if you let it, a wall so thick it stops a jeep.”

I
touched one four-inch spike and didn’t mention the time, when, eleven years-old
and running after dark, I sprawled, hands flailing, into the ordinary
waist-high hedge of a neighbor. I had scratches but nothing near my eyes, a
sprained ankle, but not a shattered leg. And I had time, lying there, to note
the wire strung calf-high a foot from that well-maintained hedge, as if whoever
lived behind it and its sparse, small thorns expected boys like me to run
through his bushes, as if he owned a country so valuable there were invaders
perpetually ready to cross that border.

9

The one
time I hitchhiked with a girl we were offered rides more quickly than I’d ever
received them on my own. I was in graduate school. She was eighteen, a
freshman, who I’d told over a pitcher of the 3.2 beer she could legally drink
in Ohio, that hitching was the way I got back and forth to Pittsburgh where, by
coincidence, she had a boyfriend she wanted to see.

Returning
from our weekend trip, it had taken six rides to approach Columbus, so it was a
relief when, as twilight settled in and we climbed into the back of a car, that
the two men in the front seat said they were going to Kentucky, meaning this
ride would take us almost a hundred miles and leave us at an exit less than
half an hour from Oxford.

I
relaxed and watched the landscape turn rural as it rolled by in the gathering
darkness. After it became too dark to see much of anything off to the side, I
began to drift until the radio skidded up to near roar level. I sat up,
recognizing Led Zeppelin just as the driver jerked his head around and said,
“This tune gets me going.”

I
nodded, but the girl I was with suddenly looked apprehensive, as if the radio’s
volume signaled something threatening, and for the first time I calculated the
difference between one man and two in the front seat of a strange car.

When
the Zeppelin song ended, the car began to slow, and a moment later we were
rolling onto an exit ramp that looked remote, not even a gas station waiting
near the upcoming stop sign. “What’s out here?” I managed to croak.

The
driver swiveled almost completely, and this time, grinning, he said, “Dinner.
The best hamburger you’ll ever eat.”

He
rolled through the stop sign, accelerating at once onto a two-lane that twisted
into forest. “Pictures of Lily,” a song by The Who that was supposed to be
about masturbation came on, but I searched along the floor with my shoes,
hoping to touch something heavy and hard. I needed a weapon, and that car was immaculate
with emptiness. The fingers of the girl’s right hand dug into my thigh. She was
staring over the driver’s shoulder, reading, I imagined, the speedometer for
the first small increment of deceleration.

The
thought came to me that these guys might shoot me before they raped and
strangled that girl. My next thought was that there would be a moment as the
car slowed down when that girl and I could open our respective doors and throw
ourselves out, getting to our feet and running. That might save me, but I
couldn’t imagine the girl outrunning them.

The
woods thickened, trees running right down to the shoulder. Before long, I
became certain there would be a dirt road turning off, and I’d know where I was
going to die. I searched along the floor with my hand as if something valuable
had escaped the notice of my shoe. I wondered if she carried a curling iron in
her small, overnight bag that sat on the seat between us, whether my set of
three keys might be fashioned into a weapon.

“Eight
Miles High” came on the radio, the Byrds at speaker-threatening volume. I had
the record in my apartment. The guy in the shotgun seat turned and stared back
at us so pointedly that the girl brought her arms up in front of her breasts.
“Isn’t this the greatest song ever?” the man said.

I saw a
break in the woods, a turn off, and I braced myself, watching for what would be
in the man’s hand when he lifted it higher than the back of the seat. The car
slowed. I could hear the girl’s breathing as she strangled my thigh. I tried to
focus.

And
then the car drifted by the turn off, rounding a bend to where a diner sat back
off the road within a grove of trees. The driver pulled in and said, “Here we
are,” leaving the motor run until the Byrds were finished. “Perfect,” the
shotgun seat man said. “Absolutely perfect.”

I had
to agree. I was as happy as I’d ever been, and I climbed out and followed them,
pausing only when I was in the doorway to look back to where the girl stood
near the car like a small child who’d been hoping for McDonald’s.

The
driver waved her on. The three of us waited until she walked toward us. Fifteen
minutes later I was relaxed over what proved to be an excellent hamburger
complete with cheese, tomatoes, onions, and lettuce.

When we
finally arrived in Oxford, that girl didn’t say anything except, “Do you
remember what those men looked like or what they were wearing?”

I was
quiet for a moment as she slapped the overnight bag against the side of her
leg. “No,” I said. I could name every song that played on the radio and what
both men had ordered on their hamburgers, but I didn’t remember anything about
them except they were clean-shaven and white.

“You
acted like you were happy while you were eating,” she said. “What did you
think, that those guys were our friends?” Her look let me know she’d decided I
was a fool. As she walked into her dorm, her tight jeans made me remember the
exact shape of her thighs and hips. I never saw her again.

10

This
morning I read the instruction for how to rid your house of ghosts. To begin, it
said, politely, but firmly, ask them to leave. They’re not to blame for
loitering. Convince each one that the physical world is no place to hide from
elder spirits who will, with time, forgive their sins.

The
ghosts of your family are docile, except those who died young. Naturally, they
are quick to anger. Don’t you be angry too. They’ll feed on it. Likewise, don’t
show fear. Ghosts are animals who smell opportunity in weakness.

No
luck? Try smudging. Open the windows in each room and walk holding a pot of
burning sage throughout. Tell them, “Spirits leave.” If you’re embarrassed,
professionals will do this for a fee.

Listen,
there’s reason for their restlessness. You may have outlived some of the ones
you know by fifty years, so they’re rightfully sick of your breathing and the
terrible leisure of language. All your uneventful days are enough to anger
anyone. If it wasn’t for knowing that horror is a certainty, they would bury
their phantom teeth in you. Safety is as tenuous as cupping the groin against fists
and knees. What matters is believing in your words. When the house feels empty,
bless it in the name of God.

11

During
my first semester of college teaching, I had a student who was a Vietnam veteran. He wrote a stunning essay about being ambushed and surviving while dozens
of his comrades were killed. It was 1969. I was using my new job to avoid the
draft, and I didn’t say a word to him about my snotty anti-war attitude about Vietnam.

A few
years later, shortly after I was old enough to store my draft card in a drawer
as a souvenir, the local newspaper carried a story about a son killing his
father in self-defense. The father ran a karate school. He was a certified and
much-decorated expert, and he had seen to it that his son was an expert as
well. When their argument went out of control, they fought, using all of their
karate skills, and the son, the student who’d written that essay, had finally
strangled his father with nunchucks because, he explained, “My father would
have done the same to me.”

I
reread the story as if I could discover something I’d missed about what sort of
disagreement would lead to a father and son fighting hand-to-hand to the death.
According to the story, they’d battled for nearly an hour because their mastery
of self-defense was so evenly matched.

By then
I had a wife, an infant son, and a small house that was surrounded by nothing
more than rhododendron bushes. I felt so smug in the safety of sitting with a
newspaper and a cup of coffee that I walked to where the two of them were
sleeping and listened to all of us breathing.

Gary Fincke is the
Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing and Director of
The Writers Institute at Susquehanna University.